


a rhythm of sinking soul

by evil bunny wolf (evil_bunny_king)



Series: Perihelion [3]
Category: The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M, Frank the handyman, Healing, Post-Punisher, an approximation of such, bunny slippers, fluff?, leaky pipes, snow in new york, that one Thai place that is always open
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-16
Updated: 2018-01-16
Packaged: 2019-03-05 19:22:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13394547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evil_bunny_king/pseuds/evil%20bunny%20wolf
Summary: She imagines him - warm. Imagines him in ribbed sweaters, thick socks; colours like a purple that edges into maroon, or teal, or mossy, sea-green.





	a rhythm of sinking soul

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PurpleLex](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PurpleLex/gifts).



> Title from Apple Spell by My Bubba, which I love so, so much.

Frank picks up on the second ring.

“Hey,” Karen says from her office in the bulletin, looking between the blinds at the dark roofs opposite, the glimpse of skyline.

“Hey,” he says back, voice warm and rasped with sleep. He waits a moment, the quiet comfortable and heavy, before he asks: “Everything alright?”

He’s had no flowers to warn him, this time. Pete Castiglione had given her a more permanent number two weeks after the hotel, and while they had talked in the intervening weeks, had coffee once or twice, old habits died hard. She still had the roses on a counter in her kitchen. He’d text first, before he’d call, and she’d do the same for him.

She takes a breath, feeling the shadow of pain in her healing ribs. “I need a hand."

“You alright?” he asks again, and it’s more focused, now, more awake, as if he’s pulling himself up in the bed she’s imagining him in, readying - for whatever he thought he might need to be ready for. To take another bullet for her, perhaps.

She wraps her free hand over the one holding the phone, and rephrases: “I need a favour.”

“Sure.” _Of course_. The sleepy rasp is back. She thinks she hears the rustle of sheets. “What d’you need?”

“There’s this, this light that’s gone out in the hallway,” she starts, and she wonders if her voice sounds as light as she's trying to make it. "I can’t seem to reach it.”

There’s a split-second before he laughs, but he does, as she thought he would.

“Get a chair, ma’am,” comes his answer. “Pretty sure you’re taller than me in those heels of yours.”

She smiles, pressing her fingertips against the edges of it, even though there’s no one there to see. “Pipe’s leaking, too,” she says. “Ruined all my shoes.”

“Try YouTube.”

“And my broken heater?”

He hums, the sound deep and warm through the phone and the smile escapes her and becomes a grin, the warmth reaching her fingers. “Can’t have that,” he rumbles, and she imagines him tilting his head into the phone, eyes cast down. “Too close to Christmas to be freezing your ass off. What kind of landlord do you have, if all your shit is broken?”

She shrugs a shrug he can’t see, and her pulse is feather light in her neck where her fingers have drifted. “Beats me.”

A thoughtful hum, this time. “Suppose I should pay a visit, then.”

“Suppose you should.”

“Alright.”

"Alright."

She imagines his smile - the crooked tilt of it, the flash of teeth. It’s cold in the office, emptied out as it is - everyone’s gone except the cover staff and the die-hards and she has the uncomfortable feeling that she counts as both. This corner of Hell’s Kitchen is clearing out, too. She can see people hurrying to their cars, hoods pulled tight against the wind. Snow in the streetlights. A rattle in her window panes.

She imagines him - warm. Imagines him in ribbed sweaters, thick socks; colours like a purple that edges into maroon, or teal, or mossy, sea-green.

She grounds herself back into the florescence of her office, focusing on her phone in her hand, the feeling of her stockinged toes in the carpet.

"Can you make it tonight?”

His voice lowers when he plays at being an asshole: "think I have an opening.”

“Good,” she says, too-quickly, and then she laughs. “Good. I’ll get take out?”

A sound between a hum and an agreement. “Sure.” More movement, rustling. Swinging himself out of bed, maybe. “Should I, uh, bring any tools?”

“Think I got what you’ll need,” she says, and he laughs again, low and quiet, more breath than anything.

“Alright, then.”

Another pause. It’s not uncomfortable. It could be, and by some rights it should - they’re something nebulous, somewhere stuck between _I care what happens to you_ and whatever happened at the hotel, but - it's not. It's easy, the way things often are with him, even when they're also heartbreakingly hard _._

A rustle over the line as if he's switched the phone to his other ear.

"When do you, ah, when do you want me?"

"How's seven sound?" Enough time for her to shove her laundry in the wardrobe and play at dusting. Maybe attempt the dishes in the sink.

She can almost hear him nodding. "Yeah, that works."

"See you later then?"

"Yeah, see you later."

Another pause, before she laughs and hangs up.

She scoots herself back into her desk, settling her fingers over the keys, tapping the computer back to life and the outline for her latest piece blinks back onto the screen. It’s a piece on the implosion and takeover of a private taxi company, something dredged from the backlog and abandoned by no less than two prior journalists and she's having little more luck. She tries to drag more out of it. The ideas, the words, won’t come.

She looks out at the city again. There are a few lights left on in the building opposite, blurred by the condensation climbing the glass - she can see movement across the floors; see offices, striped by blinds like hers. Snow swirls in the streetlamps. The last of the daylight purples to a sullen, bruise-black.

 

\--

 

Frank shows up at her flat two hours later in jeans and a black windbreaker. It's so typical and quintessentially Frank that when she opens the door she almost starts laughing again, stretching her sore ribs. There’s a dusting of snow over his shoulders as he lingers in the hallway, melting steadily in the heat. There's snow in his hair, catching on the curls that escape his beanie.  
  
“My heater isn't actually broken,” is the first thing she actually says, and he laughs.  
  
“Figured,” he says to the hallway, and looks at her askance. “Somehow.”

He doesn’t move to enter, though, and she doesn’t step back to let him in. He looks at her and she looks back, and he’s - no more or less than the last time she'd seen him. His beard's growing out. The bruises are almost gone. There’s a shadow at the corner of his mouth, something new, an indication of a split lip.

He licks his lips, not quite looking away.

“Gonna let me in?”

**Author's Note:**

> Very, very late kastle christmas gift for shipsabound / purplelex. Your prompts were snowfall, sweater weather, dancing, subtle intimacy, and, yeah. :')


End file.
